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Honey Sauce
1 Cup Honey 1/4 Cup Water 1 Tablespoon Butter Substitute 1/4 Teaspoon Salt 1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon Dash of Nutmeg Juice or 1 Lemon-or 2 Tablespoons Vinegar Boil together 15 minutes. The juice of one orange and grated peel may be used instead of lemon and seasoning in this recipe.
A pourable dessert syrup of the sugar-rationing type, meant for steamed and baked puddings. Two things need attention: the fat called for, and the length of the boil.
- "Butter substitute"Most likely oleomargarine or a shortening, the sort of substitution common in books written when butter was dear or restricted. Unsalted butter works and tastes better; if you use salted butter, cut the added salt.
- The 15-minute boilWith only 1/4 cup water to a cup of honey, a full rolling boil that long will drive off most of the moisture and reduce the sauce to something far too thick to pour (and honey scorches before it would ever set clean like a sugar candy). A gentle simmer of 3 to 5 minutes dissolves everything and thickens it enough; stop when a spoonful cooled on a saucer runs slowly rather than sheeting.
- Watch for scorchingHoney darkens and turns bitter well below the temperature ordinary sugar syrup tolerates. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat moderate, and stir once the mixture starts to smell toasty.
- Lemon or vinegarBoth are there for acid, chiefly for flavour and balance against the sweetness; honey is already mostly invert sugar, so there is little to crystallise. A tablespoon or two of cider vinegar is unremarkable in the finished sauce; distilled white vinegar is sharper and less pleasant here.
- The orange variation"Instead of lemon and seasoning" means the orange juice and zest replace the cinnamon and nutmeg as well as the lemon. Add the grated peel off the heat so the oils do not cook away.
- Yield and servingRoughly a cup once reduced, enough to sauce a small pudding for several people. Serve warm; it thickens considerably as it cools, and a spoonful of hot water loosens it again.
Honey sauces of this kind are generally traced to the run of cookbooks published when refined sugar was expensive, rationed, or patriotically conserved, and the giveaway is the phrase "butter substitute" sitting where an earlier book would simply have said butter. Home economists of the period are often said to have circulated conversion tables for replacing sugar with honey, corn syrup, or molasses, and puddings, being cheap bulk food built on stale bread and leftover fat, were the natural place to spend the substitute. The acid, whether lemon juice or plain vinegar, adds flavour. A recipe like this is recording household thrift as much as dessert.